Friday, April 27, 2012

Whenever you are raising livestock, fencing is one of the most demanding, expensive and unending tasks that can make or break your farm. I'll try to find the good country quote about fences a bit later. But for now the Keyline project adds a new twist on fencing, or should I say curves ;)
Keylines are driven by the terrain, so they're not straight!
That goes contrary to everything we know about country fences. This big keyline and site development means that we'll make major changes on our fences and many straight fences will be removed and new fences that wind along the keyline swales will be installed.

A little help from my brother for new post holes along the keylines...

Everyone's in on the action :) Kateri (10) is showing how a farm girl can get it done!
Some cross fences have to go, and new ones put in place along the alleys.

Untwisting old rusted twisties ;) I think she's got the technique.

OK, I found it in an old Cowboy's guide:

Our Wild West "cowboys guide to life"

- Don't name a pig you plan to eat.

- Country fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.

- Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

These little girls are very recent additions to the farm; not the one on the left ;) They are only a few days old and almost could get lost in the weeds. I'm sure the mamas will make it look like less of a jungle very soon!

These are Oberhasli dairy goats and both newborn kid goats are girls. Rose (5) likes to feed them and play with them.

In the middle area of our site development we are planting an orchard with fruit trees and edible plants. This is Kathy's area and it's right in the middle of the action. It has very rich soil since it's at the bottom part of the bowl. We are just beginning a very large fencing project with both temporary electrical fences and more permanent ones. One trick to the contour lines is that they're not straight, so the typical country fences are not a perfect fit. We'll still use "H" posts at the ends to provide strength for tension, but the wires cannot be stretched as tight. More intermediate posts can help. It is worth the trade-off because the trees will get a lot more water in the ground, and as the rows of trees and bushes grow they will actually serve as somewhat of a barrier. The plan is to graze the cattle through the bigger alley ways (50' spacing) between the tree lines and rotate them daily if possible. That is best for the grass, the cattle and the and overall.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

"Keyline design is a technique for maximizing beneficial use of water resources of a piece of land. The Keyline refers to a specific topographic feature linked to water flow. Beyond that however, Keyline can be seen as a collection of design principles, techniques and systems for development of rural and urban landscapes. Keyline design was developed in Australia by farmer and engineer P. A. Yeomans, and described and explained in his books The Keyline Plan, The Challenge of Landscape, Water For Every Farm and The City Forest."

In our site development, it's a contour line/channel or slightly sloped to "capture" water, slow it down and increase water absorption in the ground.

Here are a couple of keyline "swales" and "berms" to channel the water along the contours on our farm.This morning's rainfall was a good first test of this water management system. We planted about a thousand trees in rows just below each swale (ditch) and berm (mound). As the trees grow larger their root systems will benefit greatly from the improved water absorption.

First off, I need to say that I will probably never be a good blogger, because life is just too engaging in the "real" world. However it's not due to boring circumstances... anything but ;)
We have now kicked off a major site development using permaculture principles for the purpose of sustainable food and educational value. This first part of the site development was a big "keyline" workshop to begin transformation of the land for better water management and a holistic approach to planting sustainable, perennial food ecosystems. We are making an effort to document this transformation from the start!

The workshop was a very big success! Mark Shepard led the workshop and was a wealth of knowledge and energy for the application of permaculture principles. He was also an excellent fit with his focus on larger scale site development. He is into food production! Our goals for our development is fairly large scale; almost community scale project. More on that later...

I owe many thanks to Sustainable Tahlequah and especially Julie Gahn for her tireless efforts to bring this together. We are also greatly indebted to Leslie Moyer for her expertise with edible plants and general skills related to trees, plants and local resources.

Mark Shepard did a wonderful job in making the case for Permaculture on a Friday night talk, and then a very productive hands-on workshop to get us going with this big site development project. The keylines were laid out and with the dozer the large swales and berms were made to manage water runoff for strong tree growth and thriving ecosystem.

We were in a mad rush to get trees in the ground ahead of a good sized storm. The storm threats of rain kept moving further from us and we were left wondering how much to focus on irrigation vs. planting trees. The end result is that we got a lot of trees planted and enjoyed a healthy rain this morning. Our irrigation system is still being built, so we have to be careful to not end up watering more than a thousand trees by hand. It looks like we'll get it setup in time to keep the job reasonable.

The next step is fencing! Fencing is one of the most daunting tasks, especially if you live in Cherokee county where your most successful crop is rocks ;)

The fencing plan is in place; we have bought most of the materials; it is expensive, and we need to get it setup before the cows need that pasture. I'll share pics of the fencing as it goes up.

I am very grateful for the exceptional participation in the talks and the workshops. It's been a incredible start and we're in this for the long haul!